Official 2.5" HDD caddy for VPC-Z11?

I am planning on replacing my VPC-Z11's dvd drive with an SSD. Is the official HDD mounting kit available through Sony or from anywhere else?

 

I'd be interested in this too. Did you find anything?

 

They don't offer it,however I found this . Also you can refer to this thread

 

That is sweet. Anyone have one yet? Does it just swap out for the DVD with no mods?

 

Take a look at the thread before making this another thread regarding that. There are some serious caveats to doing this read the literature.

 

But the caddy that was posted looks like it does have a micro sata connector on it already. So it looks like it may be a simple swap.

 

Serious caveats? The only serious issue is for the people who have quad-ssd setups, since adding the 5th drive screws up the ACPI tables and causes the CPU to never throttle down...

Is there another issue that I am missing?

 

Has anyone actually installed one of these? what's the external finish like (as they don't show it on the web site).

 

I e-mailed them

 

According to their other caddy for Sony machines, you can reuse your DVD faceplate if desired.

My question is will this work for the VPC-Zs? It only mentions the VPN-Zs.

 

THAT WOULD SEEM LIKE A LARGE CAVEAT IF YOU HAVE A QUAD SETUP.
That is what I was referring too and I was pointing you to the thread as all (correct me if i'm wrong) NA. models are quad.

 

That is not correct. Those of us with 128 and 192 certainly are only 2x or 3x.

 

besides didn't psyq or someone else here write a bootloader patch that fixes that power bug anyhow? Pretty certain someone did.

 

it didn't completely solve the problem if you look through the whole thread.

 

I didn't think that people with Quad SSD setups would be that desperate to upgrade their storage anyway .

I'm thinking of using the caddy you linked + one of those new Seagate Momentus XT hybrid drives as a storage device with some of the benefits of an SSD.

Is there a service manual available for the new Z? I wanna see how hard it is to take the top off.

 

I think the other issue you are going to run into is voltage available at the power connector at the drive. IIRC others were having issues using anything but SSD's in the optical drive slot.

 

I believe there was only one guy that had the problem (HDD clicking), but it wasn't confirmed if it was a bad drive or insufficient power requirements.

 

Apparently newmodeUS will have a caddy and faceplace specifically for the 2010 Vaio Z available in a few weeks time. Good news.

 

do you have a source for that?

 

You'd be surprised, my friend

 

I would look at actual benchmarks long and hard before deciding on this drive.

And keep in mind that it has a single NAND chip, and no extra space for bad block mapping, advanced wear leveling or similar.

 

The source is newmodeus. They told me roughly the same thing. They actually said that the caddy works fine on the VPC-Z, it's just the faceplate is too long so they are making a new one.

 

oh ok cool. ill be waiting for one.

 

has anybody bought this yet? What hard-drive did you get to go inside it... I'd want something around 300gb, 7200 rpm that runs cool, and quiet. They also said that they can ship the old caddy, and then the faceplate later.

 

I just got an ETA on a newer Z version:

 

I ordered myself the ThinkPad version of caddy. I have 3 x SSD + DVD version of Z.

While ThinkPad caddy leaves rectangular hole in faceplate when installed into Z11, I might find use for that hole. It would be great to put an extra USB connector there. I've recently found that 3 USB connectors is not always enough, even on the go. Consider me having connected external mouse, Akai LPD8 and LPK25 (very small portable control surface and MIDI keyboard), and I have no free USB connectors left.

Z11/12 definitely can support more USB, chipset is capable of it. I just wonder if there is place on motherboard or rather on one of the seemingly unused connectors that I could use to route out that extra USB. I am even considering removing Bluetooth and using its USB connection. Don't need Bluetooth if I can get extra USB.

 

Just use a little mini USB hub.

 

i just got emailed what the z11 version of newmodeus' caddy will look like:

2nd hard drive or SSD caddy for Sony VAIO Z, Z11 Series (VPC) [SONY-2BAY-Z11] - $43.00 : NewmodeUS, Hard Drive Caddys for Notebooks

they still had no chance of testing it in a z12. judging from the looks: do you guys think the caddy should fit the z12?

 

that really looks promising. what about the power management issues when replacing the odd with hdd or ssd in a quad-ssd setup? may there be any solution or are the issues hardware-related?

 

Good news! I don't know what HDD to choose for caddy I would prefer most quiet and roomy HDD. Maybe WD7500BDVT

 

There are some photos of new caddy for Sony VAIO Z11





As you see the caddy is not fudge to notebooks body

 

Hmm, that doesn't look promising... Is this caddy from newmodeus? I saw a YouTube video where it looked nice and clean with their caddy: YouTube - ‪Add 2nd HDD or SSD to Sony VAIO Z Laptop‬‎

 

Yes. This caddy photos from real owner.

 

I rather get the $13 ones off ebay with the bonus ventilation slot.

 

Shouldn't i worry about the dust and the dirt coming through that hole inside my 2000€ Notebook?

Actually looking at your pictures and and the youtube video, your caddy doesn't look like this one: http://newmodeus.com/shop/index.php...id=335&zenid=469c0a677303eabe23c566fd76020205

And they are still marked as being sold out, where did you get yours and how much did you pay?

 

There are not my pictures. I took them from russian Z11 forum. A forum member wrote about he got the caddy from NewmodeUS, Hard Drive Caddys for Notebooks one week ago. Before I saw these pictures I hoped to buy it.

 

Well, then you should checkout newmodeus yourself and take a look at the caddy for the z11/z12.
You can't buy it right now, it is scheduled for the 20.08.10 and in addition, looking at the pictures, I am pretty sure, that he purchased something on eBay, maybe not knowing it isn't the same caddy modeus is selling, because if you have a look at the video, you will see that there is no space around the hdd in that caddy.
At the first picture you posted i can clearly see space, so it doesn't seem to be the modeuscaddy.
At least i really hope so, because that's more or less a deal-breaking factor for me on the z11/z12 purchase.

 

Thanks for you suggest! I will be waiting more photos after 20.08.10

 

Is it anyhow possible to get one (or two) of Sony's sub-1.8" SSD's?
Since I want that HDD there anyway, that would save me the trouble fixing a caddy in.

 

I got one of these just to play with it. It's ok but I could only get one of the 2 dvd brackets attached to it. At any rate, if someone wants to buy it from me (I'll give you a deal) PM me.

 

Can anyone posts some pics with new newmodeus caddy? Is it looks like on the youtube video?